Why Does Exercise Have to Happen After Work?

Many organisations encourage employees to be more active. Gym discounts. Step challenges. Wellbeing apps. Exercise classes. Advice about moving more.

But underneath many of these initiatives sits an assumption that is rarely examined: physical activity is supported by work, but expected to happen around work.

Before work. After work. At lunch, if there is time. At home. At the gym.

The question is not whether organisations should become responsible for how employees exercise. They should not. The more useful question is whether the working day itself creates realistic opportunities for movement.

Access is not the same as opportunity.

Start with the physical reality of the work

There is no single workplace activity strategy because there is no single physical working day.

An office employee may spend much of the day sitting. A remote worker may move even less between meetings. A frontline employee may already spend hours standing, walking, lifting or performing repetitive physical tasks.

There is no universal physical activity intervention because there is no universal physical working day.

That distinction matters. Telling a physically demanding workforce to 'move more' may be irrelevant. Offering a lunchtime class to a team with no control over break times may create access without genuine opportunity.

Movement does not have to mean a workout

Workplace physical activity can include structured exercise, but it can also mean interrupting prolonged sitting, walking conversations, active travel, movement between tasks or creating realistic opportunities to change posture and move during the day.

The evidence suggests workplace interventions can influence physical activity and sedentary behaviour, but effects vary considerably by intervention, workforce and outcome. Evidence on cognitive or productivity benefits is more uncertain and should not be overstated.

That means the business case should not be built around a simplistic promise that a class will make employees more productive.

Design around the workforce

A useful starting point is not: which class should we buy? It is: what are we actually trying to change?

Is the challenge prolonged sitting? Limited movement during remote work? Lack of accessible opportunities? Physical fatigue in a demanding role? Participation barriers? Recovery? Connection?

Only then does the intervention make sense. Office, hybrid, remote, frontline and multi site workforces will require different approaches. Accessibility, ability, intensity, timing, space, clothing, cultural considerations and employee preference all affect whether an opportunity is genuinely usable.

Inclusion belongs in the design

Inclusive physical activity is not about creating one standard activity and adapting it afterwards for anyone who cannot participate.

It starts by recognising that employees have different bodies, abilities, health conditions, working patterns and relationships with exercise.

Where structured sessions are used, appropriately experienced providers can help organisations think through adaptations, format, intensity and participation barriers before delivery.

Low participation is information

Organisations often evaluate activity by counting attendance. Attendance matters, but low participation can also tell us something.

Was the timing realistic? Did employees have permission to step away? Was the format accessible? Did the activity appeal to the workforce? Did operational pressures make participation impossible?

Are you measuring attendance, or learning from it?

Survey. Test. Observe. Adapt. The purpose is not to force movement into every working day. It is to understand whether the way work is organised unnecessarily removes opportunities for it.

Rethinking the boundary

Physical activity remains an individual choice. But the environment in which that choice is made matters.

An organisation can offer a gym membership and still design a working day in which employees feel unable to leave their desks. It can run a wellbeing challenge while rewarding constant availability. It can provide an exercise class that large parts of the workforce cannot realistically attend.

The question, therefore, is not simply whether physical activity benefits are available. It is whether the working environment makes movement realistically possible.

Perhaps the question isn't whether employees exercise enough. It's whether we've designed working lives in which movement has somewhere to go.